


we’ve caught 46 daybreaks in 39 days

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: just let them REST alex [4]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, One Shot, Team as Family, and love the HECK out of each other, best family, brief description of impalement (non graphic), brief descriptions of violence, but these fools are best friends, dnd magic bullshit, listen i know that tag is romantic, lots and lots of handwaving, so i? shall use it as i please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 16:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: it takes three years. a ritual that frankly, shouldn't exist. but hamid and azu get their friends back.





	we’ve caught 46 daybreaks in 39 days

**Author's Note:**

> title from "probable poem for the furious infant" by jaswinder bolina, which i Cannot stop reading and whose energy very much informed this. (or i guess the first version of this, i dunno how much made it through the like thirteen different drafts)  
what if i only ever wrote different permutations of 'actually grizzop and sasha are fine and reunited with their friends and ancient rome never happened'  
this one took several days and went through so much fucking revision oh my god, oh my GOD, this is my baby. i am so proud of this. dont know if i nailed azu or grizzop's voice but i dont think it's unrecognizable so??? i hope????

None of them are sure if the spell is even going to _ work_. It’s an over the top, complex ritual with at least one component that requires an animal that Hamid is pretty sure went extinct several hundred years ago. Not to mention the seven page section that combined elements of necromancy, transmutation, _ and _ evocation- Curie had to set down the book and take a few deep breaths before continuing at the sheer _ audacity _ of whoever had written it. But. _ But_. They’d found it in a library alongside Roman texts that had _ also _ been thought long extinct, and spell scrolls transcribed with glyphs that shouldn’t have been technically able to exist at all, and it was their best- their _ only _ chance at getting Grizzop and Sasha back. 

It’s been three years. Three _ years _ of pain and distrust, three years since they’d run head first into a new, broken world none of them recognized, two members too short. Three years of fighting, and spying, and in the sparse quiet moments they could find, desperate hoping. And now, the world is still broken but it’s healing, blue veins are still a vivid sight but now there is a _ chance_, a sliver of sunlight through the rain in the form of clear vials filled with teal-green liquid, and the world has grabbed onto it and the world is _ clinging_.

And so Curie and Hamid gather as many components as they can, working with what they have. They find what magical experts have squirreled themselves away and survived the awfulness (Not many. Not enough.) and they wring them of every drop of arcane expertise they have. They spend weeks trying to translate untranslatable runes before Einstein asks them why they don’t just poke them and see what happens. (They spend several weeks after that under a worrying amount of curses, but compared to what they’ve been through, it’s nothing, and now they know what the runes do.) 

(Hamid, of course, would take on every curse there is if it meant he could get his friends back. And Curie has a duty to them, she says. A duty to Eldarion, she does not say, because Eldarion is dead, not lost. Had given herself up to get the rest through, and Curie _ knows _ this, knows intellectually that the spell will not find Eldarion because she is not lost but _ dead _ and yet. And yet, even after all these years of hardness and hardship, the small spark of hope within her heart will not leave her. And so she spends the late hours of the night and early hours of the morning side by side with Hamid, hunched over a desk or a lab table, staring at magic even as it twists and swims in ways that speak more of the need for sleep than the inherent intransigence of magic. Hamid doesn’t ask. Just hands her the next component.)

Now, six months and fourteen days (Not that Hamid’s keeping track. Not that Azu’s keeping track. Not that Curie’s keeping track.) after two orcs and two halflings and one goblin and one gnome had been spat out from beneath the hand of Hades (not that they’d know that) they’re standing in front of the most intricate ritual circle any of them have ever seen. Covering a floor the size of a modest ballroom are layers and layers of concentric circles, squares that layer each other just a little bit off, and the further within the circle the odder it is to look at, until it almost seems concave. Pounds of chalk now lay in fine lines across the marble floor, gem dust of many varieties fill the tiny rivulets painstakingly carved to measure. Hamid stares at the circle and knows- if this doesn’t work, their friends are well and truly gone. The fact that they’d found this spell alone is frankly, astounding. He aches to perform the spell himself, but he doesn’t have the type or amount of power required. He’s helped as much as he can. Instead, he has to leave it to Curie, and Einstein, and a few other arcane spellcasters that Curie promised could be trusted with such a task. 

(Hamid watches them from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t flash his claws, though he wants to. They’re calm, steady. Most have greying temples. They have auras of confidence similar to Curie’s, and Hamid wants to trust them. But. _ But_. These are his friends, at stake. His most precious things, his friends, and Hamid trusts very few people to protect his friends, now. So he smiles at them, and thanks them, and learns their names. But from the corner of his eye, he watches them intently.)

Curie starts the spell, and Hamid joins the others at the edge of the room. It’s not safe for the spell, or them, to be close to the circle right now. Zolf and Cel are stood awkwardly against the wall together, and Hamid appreciates their presence. Zolf doesn’t know Grizzop, has already grieved for Sasha, and Cel doesn’t know either of them except as no longer shared jokes or cut off names and pained, apologetic smiles. 

They’re both standing there though, giving Hamid and Azu silent support, aware of the gravity of what they’re attempting. The air gets heavy with magic, and light starts to glow so bright it hurts, and Hamid squeezes Azu’s hand and Azu squeezes back, and then there’s a **_bang_** and the sound of shattering glass as the high glass windows shatter, and there are two bodies in the center of the circle, standing back to back, covered in blood, weapons raised, looking three years younger than the rest of them, and Hamid is _crying_.

  
  
  


Grizzop and Sasha have been in Ancient Rome for nine hours. That’s what runs through Grizzop’s head, alongside a thousand other racing thoughts as he realizes he’s surrounded by the Mars lot on all sides, and there’s a captain sneering at him, and Grizzop’s pretty sure he should have been _ dead _ by now. They’ve only been in Ancient Rome for nine hours. They’ve crashed an orgy and broken into a temple and learned a new language (Mostly. Sort of. A little. Not really. Really, Dutch is a perfectly fine language, Grizzop has never needed latin and he maintains that Ancient Rome is an outlier and shouldn’t be counted.) and broken into another temple and followed an old man- really, why on earth did they do that? Stupid idea, really, should’ve just kept searching the Cult of Hades’ temple, Grizzop is _ sure _ he would’ve found something, but- but. It’s only been nine hours. 

Grizzop is thinking about this and about the captain and the weight of his bow in his hand and the soldiers (cultists? Martians?) surrounding him, but then he sees a spear about to pierce Sasha and he thinks _ nope! _ and he pulls on that feeling that’s always in him, that feeling like moonlight and the faint smell of blood on wood and wet fur and the thrill of the chase, and he thinks, _ I need to protect my pack_, and Artemis doesn’t say _ I know _ but he hears it anyway, and the spear doesn’t go through Sasha. 

He sees her head tilt in confusion, but then he’s a little distracted by the feeling of a spear piercing through his breastplate, which, _ ow! _ and then Sasha is sprinting towards him.

They end up back to back, and Grizzop is fairly certain they’re about to die. Which is very irritating, because that smug captain is still _ standing _ and _ smirking _ and Grizzop has _ things _ he wants to do, and if they die here Hamid and Azu and the others are never going to know what happened to them and that’s not- that’s not _ right_, they aren’t _ meant _ to die here, Grizzop can feel it in his bones. 

It’s as he thinks that- that _ this isn’t right_, and as Sasha lunges forward again with her daggers, never mind both her arms are slick with blood, that there’s suddenly a feeling in the air that feels like choking on magic, and there’s a buzzing in his ears and a light so bright it _ burns _ and Grizzop barely has time to ready his bow before they’re not in Ancient Rome anymore. 

Instead, they’re standing in an enormous room, on a complicated looking chalk circle, and Grizzop has just added several arrows to the wall, and Sasha is now stabbing air where there was once a person, and, hm. Well. This… is unexpected. Grizzop turns around, movements still full of battle-grace, and notes the exhausted looking wizards, including Curie and Einstein at measured points around the circle, and he sees Hamid and Azu and a dwarf and a new person with very tall hair all standing against the wall, looking exhausted and _ alive_, and Grizzop decides this is something that requires sitting down. 

He plops to the floor, sets his bow next to him, and Sasha, after a second joins him, both more awkwardly and more gracefully. 

“So. What’s happened here, then?” he asks, laying on hands to himself, and then Sasha as he does.

Azu starts crying.  
  
  
  


There is quite a bit more crying on Hamid and Azu’s part before they get any actual talking done. Curie ushers the wizards out, giving them a nod, and then a sigh when Einstein pokes his head back in to assure them he’s missed them very much, and still has survival packs for them, with mobile stones and everything, so don’t _ even _ worry about it!

Azu gathers both of them (and Hamid, of course) into a crushing hug, and he has to (gently) poke her with an arrow to release them before they stop breathing. 

And then Grizzop and Sasha learn that they haven’t just been gone for nine hours. They’ve been gone for _ three years _ and there’s been a plague on, and this is Zolf- Hello?- and Cel- Hi!- and they never stopped looking, _ we promise, we never forgot about you, but when we got back it’d been a year and a half and there was a resistance and the world was broken and we just couldn’t- we didn’t have a _ ** _way_**_. But we tried so hard, and now you’re back, and things are better, still not great, but better now! _

After they learn about the blue veins and the weather-kraken and all the other ways the world is broken, Grizzop and Sasha take turns narrating their Ancient Rome adventure. 

  
  


“You met _ Cicero_?!” Hamid asks, at a reasonable volume that doesn’t make Grizzop’s ears twitch. 

“You- He- What- That- That’s _ incredible_, what was he _ like_?” Hamid asks, brown eyes wide and fascinated, leaning forward, and Grizzop and Sasha speak at the same time, in the same tone. 

“He was an _ idiot_-” “He was _ useless_-”

Hamid gapes at them. “But- But- Cicero was one of the greatest orators of all time! He- His _ influence _ on the latin language was- _ is_\- _ unprecedented_! His influence on magic _ alone _ is, is, is- _ unparalleled!_”

Grizzop and Sasha wince in unison at the memory of Cicero’s _ quiet voice_. 

“Yeah, I suppose ‘orator’ is one word for it,” Grizzop says. 

Eventually, the talking comes to an end, and the four of them stare at each other, overwhelmed and filled with a bone deep tiredness from the day, from the weight of three years out of sync. At least, until Azu breaks it. 

“I am _so_ glad you’re back.” 

**Author's Note:**

> 😊


End file.
